Mega Comics CheckList

– Dave Davison is the subject of Project: New Man, a partly secret joint venture of the U.S. Government and the Fortress Foundation, a private sector non-profit philanthropic organization dedicated to public defense and scientific research. Dave has the dual role of being part of the research project and at the same time being groomed by the Government as a public protector in the Five Lakes Megalopolis area. Dave has a dark past which he hoped was dead and buried but in his first public adventure he confronts his past and an old partner head on in “The Mall Massacres”. Legacy Comics 1991 Black and White 32 page Independent Comic: Project: New Man #1is FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– His actual identity is as much a mystery as what drives him. He calls himself Ebenezer Baal, and he is The Haunted Man but he intends for misery to have company as he in turn haunts Dave Davison a.k.a New Man. We find out in this origin tale Dave was not always a hero, and it seems his past is easily as shady as the criminals he now pursues! Co-Starring The Thunder Hawks! The backup story from Legacy Comics 1991 Black and White 64 page Independent Comic: Humants #1! FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– Dave Davison A.K.A New Man goes out for a morning jog only to return to the Moriah Building under a full scale attack from Cyber-Tech! Also featuring Bearcat, and the Thunder Hawks! Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– We tie up a lot of loose ends in this issue as The Haunted Man concludes. We find out the true identity of Ebeneezer Baal, see Bearcat in action again, see the abduction of Fawn and Nick, Cyber-Tech escapes plus a special secret surprise guest-star! Yeah! This one has it all!Featuring lots of never before published and some ALL-NEW material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– High crime rates, higher gas prices, inflation and garbage strikes, are one thing but the recent unnatural storms have the residents Five Lakes Megalopolis rattled. Then the appearance of unusual individuals wielding supernatural powers precede the coming of a walking, flying nightmare! His name is Megeddon, Dark Lord of the Hecati and his chief servant, the powerhouse called Devastax! Krystal McKliston is an investigative reporter looking into these mysteries as she learns there are “Humants Among Us!”The lead story from Legacy Comics 1991 Black and White 64 page Independent Comic: Humants #1! FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– The Herald, Magistar, and Man Ark must enter into deadly battle with Megeddon, the Dark Lord of the Hecati and his chief servant, the powerhouse called Devastax! Their goal: no less than total world destruction! Krystal McCliston, investigative reporter, tries to capture the action on video while dodging falling debris. She later comfronts a new villain: The Tower! Janeta Rosebud meets Omni Spawn and things will never again be the same! The lead story from Legacy Comics 1992 Black and White 48 page Independent Comic: Humants #2! FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– Omnispawn ushers in yet another Humant: The Savage Chaosta! Also having survived their first encounter with the evil Dark Lord Mageddon, the Khosmotic Warriors have banded together and rented an old warehouse to use as a headquarters and training facility. Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– This issue features the all out war between the Humants and the Renegade Humants! It's action from cover to cover as Freazie White, Jr. writes and does finished pencils over Mark Poe's layouts and we introduce a new inker, Paul Schulze! Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– What happens when you try to administer first aid to an unconscious Humant? Well, in the case of Chaosta things could get pretty scary when she wakes up and thinks she is still battling the Renegade Humants! Man Ark and Sojourner find a lot of trouble for their efforts! Plus: Much More by Freazie White, Jr. new inker, Anthony Grayand Billy Leavell with Letters and Edits! PLUS: An offbeat Bearcat backup tale! By Mark Poe, Freazie White, Jr., Mark Alan Lester and Billy Leavell! Featuring lots of never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

– Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog with a very high I.Q. named Nostradamus. In short: we are 3D beings, Tess and Nostradamus are 4D beings.Plus: Much More by Greg Legat writer/creator, Mark Poe with pencils, letters and colors! and J. Adam Walters handling inking embellishment. Featuring never before published material! 32 action packed pages FREE to read in this very Web Browser!

Watch for more coming soon!

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Posts Tagged ‘Greg Legat’

Well, the Republican Convention has been a pretty mediocre up until last night. They brought out some big guns and livened it up a bit. Most notably Governor Sarah Palin accepted her nomination for Vice President and gave a great speech. She’s smart, young, good looking, doesn’t back down and she’s a Hockey Mom (Re: Soccer Mom). WHEW! Barack Obama wowed us last week with his articulate, youthful, clean cut charm and now this! So we have two young people, one minority, one woman, and two old white guys! Hey the bases are loaded! So everyone is talking about change this year and there definitely will be that! But really when it’s all said and done and we have a new President of the United States of Americadoes anyone out there really think we will have any REAL change, other than the addresses of a few politicians?😉 We’ll see.

Hurricane Hanna is currently Tropical Storm Hanna but expected to increase in strength again and possibly run up the East Coast maybe making landfall in South Carolina. The bigger concern is Hurricane Ike which is at Category 4 right now and some tracts show it hitting southern Florida next week. Josephine appears to be non-threatening for now.

Okay, with current events out of the way let’s talk about comics. The image you see to your right is a cover I did back in 1987 for a title by the name of Tess, which is short for tesseract. If you don’t know what a tesseract is well, you aren’t alone, neither do I! 😉 Actually Wikipedia defines it as:

Below is another artifact from Wikipedia, a neat little gif animation released into the public domain by its author, Jason Hise which gives us a little better undersatanding of the concept…I think.

Anyway, Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog named Nostradamus. The book was originally to be published by Dimension Graphics but unfortunately never saw print. Soon it will make it’s debut right here at Mega Comics Group.com. Greg Legat created and wrote Tess while I, Mark Poe, and J. Adam Walters did the art. Stay tuned!

Senator John McCain showed up at the Republican Convention last night. He did a great job with his acceptance speech, and actually came across likable and real. I’ve never cared much for him but I was impressed with him last night. But the show stealer this week was Governor Sarah Palin. This may be the first time in history that a Vice Presidential canidate has gotten the Presidential canidate vote. I’ve already heard some folks say they would vote for McCain because of her.

So now the Conventions are over and it’s down to business. Only 2 months left before the election. Do you know who you will vote for President of the United States of America?

Hurricane Hanna is still a Tropical Storm and expected to increase in strength again and possibly run up the East Coast maybe making landfall in South Carolina. Hurricane Ike which was at Category 4 has dropped to Cat. 3 and expected to falll down to Cat. 2 by the time it hits southern Florida next week. Tropical Storm Josephine is window shopping in the Atlantic, just cruising around. 😉

The image you see here is from 1986 for the title ElfTrek, a two issue mini- series I did with Marcus Lusk and Greg Legat at Marcus’s Dimension Graphics. This was during the Black & White Boom brought on by Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles initial success. Marcus had already had success with his one-shot Secret Doors. Both of those titles sold several thousand copies before the Black & White Boom went bust. I have a lot of fund memories from doing these two issues and I just got permission from both Marcus and Greg to post those two issues on MegaComicsGroup.com. That’s another one for the forth coming Mega Tales coming soon!

The end is near! 😉 That’s right, web wayfarer, Mega Comics Group is almost done! No, we’re not calling it quits, but Phase 1 of our grand adventure into where no Mega Maniac has gone before is almost over.

What is phase one? Glad you asked! Phase 1 of our mission has been to publish our previous work from the 1980’s and 1990’s some of which first saw print as black and white independent comics which were available nationwide in comic specialty shops. So far we have put up the Legacy Comics body of work we did in the early ’90’s. We’ve got 9 issues of 32 pages each on the respective web sites of Project: New Man and the Humants. Actually we are posting the 9th issue now. When we finish posting Humants # 5 we will have 288 pages of comics up on our web server. That does not include all the other art we’ve posted like sketches, promos, concept drawings, etc. which have accompanied the MCG Daily Blog right here on this site. We’ve published 157 blogs here. That’s not a bad offering for 6 months work, eh?

Phase 2 is coming in full color! Yes, even though our critics might wish we would stop there and just fade away we just can’t oblige them. We ain’t getting any younger ya know! There is still a lot to do. First we have to finish Phase 1 with the Dimension Graphics body of work which will be in the forthcoming Mega Tales title. Tess by Greg Legat and Mark Poe are one of those tales which we’ll be doing in full 21st century color. A little of the old will be mixed with the new.

Then we will begin to publish the new concepts we’ve had in mind and been talking about for some time now. Currently on the drawing board are also new versions of Project: New Man and the Humants. In addition to those we have Miracle Comics, the Mega Mascots and The Quantum Mechanics still in the planning stages. We’ll clue you in more on these as we go. Yes, things will be mighty fine in 2009! We hope you will come along with us!

Now let’s check in on that 5th issue of Legacy Comics’ Humants!

Humants # 5:

Chaosta as you recall from Humants #2 is from the wealthy, and socially prominent Rosebud family. She has always been well taken care of as far as not lacking for any material thing she wanted. But the feelings of family love and camaraderie was never there for her. She is feeling like she belongs with this ragtag band of misfits heroes.

Scamp is also feeling like he belongs. Having lived a lot on the street, working what jobs he could secure, taking advantage of any opportunity that came along legal or not, and scamming as much as he could get away with to make a buck, always kept him on the run. Now he feels like he can relax in a real, secure job, and not have to always look over his shoulder. Of course if a super baddie blows up the warehouse tomorrow, he might be back on the streets or worse…but he doesn’t like to think that far ahead. 😉

As you can see Freazie has done some character development with this issue. He and Anthony have done a great job. Billy has done pretty good too! 😉

We talked about it some yesterday: What’s to come for Mega Comics Group.com? We clued you in on our plans to re-launch the Humants title picking up the story almost 20 years after the end of issue #5. We told you how this time around Freazie won’t be writing or penciling it. Freazie has turned the Legacy Universe over to Mark but will still have editorial oversight since he created most of it. We told you there is no set date for the return yet. Mark is working on the story and art along with Project: New Man to be re-launched sometime later this year. The two titles will remain separate but intertwined more than ever using the latest techniques available in full color specifically for the web. All that is coming later this year.

Monday we will have our full color back cover for Humants #5 which wraps up that issue! Don’t miss out on that!

We have a bit of space between the old Humants series ending, and the Mega Tales series beginning. So up first: We will be doing some upgrades to our site for the rest of February. There are a lot of things that needs ye ol’ Mega Webmaster’s attention that have been put off because of daily comics for the past 6 months have kept us busy! So postings may not be daily and they may only be brief 1 or 2 paragraphs at times just to alert you to upgrades, updates, or new features. So please be patient and remember, March will be here before you know it!

New Merchandise is on the way! We are going to have new products for our Cafe Press store! New t-shirt designs, new mugs, those long overdue bumper stickers and lots more. We are also going to begin the process of packaging our Legacy Comics work for Trade Paperback releases. More detials on that soon.

New Site Features: Our writers and artists bios and contact information pages are in the works already, so watch for those soon.

Here’s something totally unrelated to entertain you courtesy of You Tube. This ad ran with the Super Bowl from 2 or 3 years ago. One of our favorites.

Here’s the last black and white art for Humants # 5.

Humants # 5 Inside Back Cover:

Next Issue? What will happen to Vic Torrent and Moniel Khonte? What’s the Humants next move now that they are settled into their renovated warehouse H.Q.? How does the government tie into all this? These are a few of the questions left unanswered at this point in the Humants saga. But such is the state of a continuous serial comic magazine. 😉

When we do resume the story we will be coming full forward from 1993 to the present. Almost 20 years have passed and change has come! It will be interesting, suspenseful, action packed and in full color this go around. So stay tuned to the announcements on the MCG Daily Blog for the relaunch date!

Friday?! Whew! This has been a whirlwind week with lots going on. We’ve been adding to the site and making changes little by little. In the days to come you will be seeing a lot more new features so stay tuned. Right now let’s take a peek at the new page for:

Mega Tales # 1

The Story Of Tess!Foreword and art by Mark Poe

Welcome! Today’s update for Mega Tales #1 is what will be the inside front cover for the printed edition. We feature some more art and a foreword by Mark Poe. The art is from 1987, when the original story was done, but with 2009 digital color. The art for Tess was inspired greatly by the works of John Byrne and Terry Austin who were very popular throughout the ’80’s at Marvel on such titles as The Uncanny X-Men and Fantastic Four. Some influence from the King, Jack Kirby is present too, more so in the use of large panels than anything else at this point in Mark’s career. There is also a non-comics influence which creator/writer Greg Legat suggested from Patrick Nagel, an American artist who created popular illustrations most of which emphasize the simple grace and beauty of the female form, in a distinctive style descended from Art Deco. He is best known for his illustrations for Playboy magazine, and the pop group Duran Duran, for whom he designed the cover of the best selling albumRio.

Monday we will have the Mega Comics Group Weekly Blog Update and then Wednesday be back here for page 1 of Tess! Have a good weekend!

It’s Hump Day, as the radio D.J.’s like to call it! 🙂 Which of course signifies that magical moment during the work week when we reverently pause and solemnly acknowledge that we are half way to the weekend! Yay! 😉

In addition to today’s Mega Tales # 1 update, we updated the cover and inside front cover. Why? Well, it seems the other day neither were quite finished in time for posting, but close enough so as not to be late. So now they have been finished and appear in all their colorful glory! See if you spot the changes.

We mentioned some changes in our site organization like a landing page for all the comics sites: Well, we are working on it. It will be something similar to our new ads which we posted a few blogs back. If you want to see a sneak preview just scroll down the page a little.

Also we are working on a new comic title! That’s right, as if we didn’t have enough to keep up with now, our ol’ pal Marcus Lusk, formerly of Dimension Graphics’Secret Doors and Elf Trek and more recently of Tales From The Bog fame has graciously agreed to let us host his Bog Web Comics! Marcus is working on a design layout for the pages even as these words are being inscribed over the electronic either! Stay tuned for more on that! Which of course means ye ol’ Mindless Mega Minions we’ll have to redo that landing page, and this blog’s header and…oh well, it will be worth it! Count on it! 😀

But enough of this frivolity! Now it’s Tess Time!

Mega Tales # 1, Page 1:

Here we go! Page 1 of the very first story of Tess and The Lost Legacy Of Ursa Major. As we wrote before this was originally done back in 1987 but never published anywhere until now in 2009 22 years later. The art has been archived in Mark’s closet all this time! It has changed very little from the original. We scanned it all in cleaned it up and digitally re-lettered it, added some digital color and voilà: new web comics of Tess for 2009.

This story was originally plotted by Greg Legat and Mark Poe sitting around the kitchen table at Greg’s parent’s house on a few Saturday afternoons. Once we had it all written down, Mark headed back to his small studio office in his house and from his drawing board whipped out 32 pages of pencils for the first installment. We then sent it off to J. Adam Walters for inking. Somewhere along the line we decided to make it a 2 part story. So what we are beginning today is part one which will conclude Mega Tales #1.

Mega Tales #2 will feature the conclusion of this story which, to our knowledge and ironclad memories, was never plotted before. 😉 I’m sure we had an idea of where we were going as we finished up #1, but when funding to publish the first story fell off, we shelved everything.

Unfortunately, even though the art was kept up with, some of the other materials, like the original script, plot synopsis and character notes have been…well…misplaced. We are diligently searching for those so we can tell you all about our cast. Worse case scenario: we’ll redo the cast list from memory, which might be an adventure in and of itself after 22 years! gulp! 😉 Stay tuned!

What’s happening? 😀 Not a lot going on today. Storms are making their way through the southern United States again today. We’ve just come out of the longest winter any of us can remember in awhile. We’ve had a lot of rain which was much needed and welcome in ending the drought we’ve suffered for the past several years, but folks are starting to complain a little now about so much rain. We do seem to go from one extreme to the other, don’t we?

Let’s not wait any longer! When all we have to talk about is the weather it might be a cue to get on with our featured comics page! So….

Mega Tales # 1, Page 2:

Page 2 of our story takes us on a little tour of our Solar System as the alien ship makes it’s way to it’s destination, which of course is the planet Earth. Note the differences in the star ship Tess uses and the other ship which will be a point of interest later on in the story.

The art on this was fun to do. Mark used some of his ’80’s Al WilliamsonStar Wars comics for inspiration as well as that classic Neal Adams’ Supeman vs. Muhammad Ali Star Warriors Tabloid Collector’s Edition from back in the late ’70’s.

Monday we’ll have a new blog up date on teh MCG homepage. Maybe we will get back to the bios of our Mega Bullpen or maybe we’ll talk about some other sites we’ve found on the web. Tune in and see. We’ll have the thrilling third page to our Tess story next Wednesday.

Yes, we’re late this morning but with good reason! 🙂 Wow! We had some weekend! The weather went nuts Friday afternoon and then again last night! We had one of the biggest hail storms ever seen in these parts! Wind, rain, tornadoes touching down just miles from our location. Whew, but everyone is okay and we escaped with very little property damage. Some of our neighbors did not fair as well.

So in between dodging golf ball sized hailstones and tornadoes, we managed to find some treasure we have been looking high and low for. Actually, ace writer and creator of all things Tess for Mega Tales # 1, Greg Legat, gets the credit for finding it in his Dad’s garage, of all places. Yep, he found the missing Tess files! 3 manila envelopes worth of stuff. It has all the character guides, the plots for issues #1 AND #2. Mark’s original thumbnail breakdowns for both issues, concept sketches, cover roughs and more. Not only that but pages and pages of background material Greg did for Tess which at the time we hoped would be a regular series title. Greg even did brief synopsis for, get this, 28 issues! Yeah, the guy is very thorough with his plans! When Greg presented his findings with a big proud grin on his face to Mark, our publisher in training had a most grateful response: “Well, no wonder I couldn’t find it. You had all of it!” 😀

So that’s the good news! The bad news is due to the weather causing power outages we were not able to get any of it up to post today. We got part of it scanned in but that’s as far as we got. It’s hard to run computers without electricity! But fear not! We’ll start feeding this too you ASAP, hopefully this week. First we’ll get those character guides up, which will certainly help with this first story, then the rest.

We’ve been getting very positive reactions on Tess. Yes, with only the cover, an editorial page and 2 story pages we are already getting some positive responses. But you ain’t seen nothing yet! The story is just getting started. So be here Wednesday and then back Friday for pages 3 & 4!

Mid week again! 🙂 This week is passing fast! Nothing like being behind to make the week pass faster, eh? 😉 We are still working on the characters guides for Tess. We gave you the first few on today’s update but lots more are to come. Most of these guides were typed using an old electric typewriter, back in the ’80’s before we had computers. We have scanned in and are trying to convert using an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program, but some of the text is not as clean as we need, at least from our first scans. So we are having to edit and retype some of it. Normally that would not be a problem but with the storms knocking out our power earlier in the week, the regular comics pages to be processed, plus all the other work we have to do it’s slow getting to it. But we should have some more by the first of the week if not sooner.

Enough of that for now! Let’s get on with our show:

Mega Tales # 1, Page 3:

We’ll be getting the rest of the characters guides for the story up very soon but this is enough to get you started.

Dr. Anamanda Johnson is a retired NASA assistant programs director who was lured back into service to study Tess’ spacecraft. She is an expert on extra-terrestrial life, astronomy and spacecraft design.

Captain Theo McClendon is an astronaut scheduled for several more space shuttle missions before retirement from NASA. He was the first one to see Tess when her ship initially crashed to Earth. He fell in love with her and recently the 2 were married.

Fah’Drah is her birth name, Tess is the name her earth friends gave her. She comes from the planet Xan’Dahr from the 4th dimension. More on her later.

In scripting this story Stephen Greg Legat likes to take a screen play approach to his writing. In the plot he will describe the scene and plug in dialogue but he does not like a lot of narration in the final script. He likes the artist to tell the story with pictures as the camera would in a movie or TV show. This works well for the comic book as well. However, with this or just about any adventure strip in the form of web comics which are only posted 2 pages per week, following the story takes a little more patience.

Mark Poe has done new lettering and colors for these pages which he drew and J. Adam Walters inked back in 1987. PhotoShop is one of the top choices for comic book colorists in this digital age of 2009 and that is what was used for these pages. Back 1987 PhotoShop 0.63 was a year away from being released with PS 1.0 not to be on the market until 1990!

Good Friday Morning! 😀 We don’t want to keep you too long from today’s Tess page but we do want to briefly clue you in on what’s next for the FaceBook Comic Con. The foundation for a Summer Gala celebration is being laid even as we write these words, to kick off on the weekend of August 13-16, 2009! There are 3 scheduled intermittent First Friday events building up to the Summer Gala. The first of these, on Friday, May 1st, is gaining momentum with two highlight events:

Please visit these events and participate where possible, whether by leaving supportive comments to contestants and art contributors, or by entering the costume contest or submitting art yourself. Costumes and art submissions are already filling and await your enjoyment and review. It’s easy and free!

Enough already with the public service announcements! Let’s see what Tess and Theo are up to….

Mega Tales # 1, Page 4:

It’s slow going when we’re only showing you 2 pages a week, but have patience faithful reader, we are starting to see some character development emerging as well as a plot developing here. It get’s even better, so don’t go away! Stephen Greg Legat has done a great job with the script and handling so many characters, which we will meet in the coming pages. The story itself contains many elements of science fiction, adventure and super hero fair. There is also several light hearted moments such as the scene we see here, but also some deadly serious ones we’ll see in the pages to come. Greg and artist Mark Poe like to do stories which contain the serious as well as the humorous aspects of life because thats the reality of life. So don’t be surprised when these light hearted moments pop up to break up some of the tension of our little tales. But if you have read our other comics you can see a similar treatment in them as well with the scripts Freazie White, Jr. has done.

When Mark drew this back in the ’80’s he was trying to use some of the contemporary references at the time. John Bryne and Terry Austin were big influences as well as Jack Kirby. He also adapted, as much as he could, elements from Patrick Nagel and the Art Deco style which he liked to employ. Of course Mark only used those artists for reference and inspiration while trying to create it in his own style. J. Adam Walters had similar ideas while he was inking. Adam used mostly technical pens to ink and Mark gave some inking assists here and there using the same. Later, after this issue, the two would begin to use brushes in there work which often give a cleaner line.

On this page, the colors came out better and brighter than the last. The reason being we had a little more action going on with Tess teleporting herself and the refrigerator into her’s and Theo’s bedroom. Lettering and art cleanup on these pages generally takes about an hour with the actual coloring taking about 3 hours. Every page is a bit different, so the time varies.

Join us here again next Wednesday for page 5 as we begin to see what these aliens are really up to. Don’t forget the MCG Blogupdates Monday. Have a nice weekend!

Didja Notice? 🙂 We’ve got our new MCG Gateway Landing Page finished. So now when you log into MegaComicsGroup.com you will have the choice of going straight to the latest update page or to the first issue of a particular title. There are also links to this blog and the Facebook Comic Con table.

Here’s a blast from the past! The original submission letter by Greg Legat used to submit Tess to different publishers after Dimension Graphics closed shop. There is more to the letter than this, proposing other title ideas but we’ll save that for later, right now we just want too focus on Tess. So here’s Greg:

Gentlemen:

Enclosed is a submission for possible publication by your company. The name of the book is TESS. Included in this package is a synopsis, outline, and book one of the series in written form. The artwork included pertains to an adventure that takes place several issues later. It could be considered as a first issue as well, as this approach to introducing a new title sometimes works better. The book falls into the category of super-powered heroine, and was created by J. Adam Walters (inker). Mark Poe (Penciller/co-writer), and myself, Greg Legat (Creator/writer). Her power is one I have never seen presented in a comic. I realize that is a strong statement, but if you read the booklet, I think you will agree with me. The specifics about the powers and the character are included in the package. This letter is to let you know a little about how TESS came about.

It began with a general disgust towards the way women were treated in comics. All female leads in comics suffered from the same symptoms. They all had non-descript powers, large breasts, and wandered from one identity crisis to the next. Their motivations were absent, and they were weak in character. Little wonder female-lead books have been the dogs of the industry, sales- wise, for so long.

I finally became sick of this nonsense. It was time for a realistic woman to come along. Someone with a viable super-power who knew how to use it, Someone with a strong character and sense of purpose. Someone who could, in the comic medium, adequately reflect the social advances modern women have made.

However, I am not completely naive, I realize that to be commercial, the book would need to have something that others have obviously not had, something to create wider reader interest In analyzing the problem as I did above. I believe that I have come up with several basic points that, if used, will enable the book to succeed. These are: (1.) The lead must have a good, strong super-power (or ability) to keep the readers attracted to. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as the reader is able to feel that the character can make a difference in her endeavors. (2.) The motivations of the character must be made clear and strong. (3.) Her personal character must be of strong will and she must be comfortable with her lifestyle. After all, why do something if it makes you unhappy? (4.) Have a solid group of friends or colleagues for her to interact with This reveals her character much better, and can also lend a “team book” atmosphere to the title. It can also mean that the lead will not have to “carry” the book and be present on every page, which can be tiring for writer and fan alike (5.) Do not overdo the character. That is, don’t make her too powerful, or too perfect. Let her have problems and happiness as a mixture, as we all do. (6.) Establish villains and other supporting characters cleanly. Let the reader know the how’s and why’s, (7.) And lastly, have plot lines that run the spectrum available to comics today. Some stories can be serious, some a bit cute, some thought provoking. As long as you maintain an overall tone in the title that the reader can grasp, don’t feel tied down to a one- dimensional character

Naturally, I assume you know these things, and I only list them here to show you the direction I see TESS taking. On that regard, I do not see TESS as a feminist book, but would like to think that she is a better representative of the modern woman than, say, a character in a “good girl” book. Also, I do not think of TESS as “my statement”, or some such prima donna stuff, but I do like to think out my characters well, and I suppose that is the reason for my detailed analysis of the subject. The main thing I want TESS to be is, of course, entertaining. The illustrated story in this packet is a little bit like the old comic episodes of Bonanza, in that it is not really indicative of the general tone of the book, but occasionally a light story will come along. I came up with the story line to incorporate many different areas known to be of reader interest, such as aliens, cute animals, and situations in which the lead character could show her stuff in grand and glorious fashion in battles and confrontations. I felt this would be a strong first issue entry. Another aspect many of my plot lines take, you will note from the list, is the tendency to use many of the mysteries and wonders of the areas of science and history as backdrops for the plots. I again feel that these make more interesting stories, as I am taking known phenomena and “running with them”, as it were, or maybe saying “what if…” to the subjects, I have always enjoyed reading stories like these. Another area the stories come from is social topics, or morality plays. These, while worthy of using as comic stories, must be done subtly, for any heavy-handedness comes off as preaching, which I want to avoid,

That about does it for the description of what I see TESS to be. I do feel that it would only work as a color book, and we send you the artwork in black & white just to show you what we can do. Mark and myself genuinely want to get into the comic book field full time, and are working toward that goal In the drawn story, you first see the front cover of the book, then the inside front cover, next the story, and then the back cover. On the back cover are advertisements for other projected titles Mark and myself have in the development stage. I should point out that the drawn story is part one of a two-part story line, and in the second issue we plan to have at the end of the story, along with two pages of “character sketches” detailing the backgrounds of the characters (in a similar fashion to the Marvel Universe or the DC Who’s Who).
Well, that’s about it. Thanks for your time. Again, if you are interested in TESS or any of the other titles, please get in touch with us. My address and phone number follow.

Thank you,

Greg Legat

That’s it. We thought this would be good to run since it gives you insight into what Greg and Mark had in mind for the series.

Some of the Cast Guides will be posted later today or tomorrow! We just have a little more editing to do on those.

The Fourth Dimension! 🙂 What is the Fourth Dimension? Stephen Greg Legat, creator and writer of Tess and known around these parts as “Greg” and Mark Poe, penciller and co-plotter of the same series as well as Publisher in training for MCG, have been having some discussions about the subject lately. Way back in the ’80’s when Greg concieved the idea for his series about The Living Tesseract he proposed that she came from The Fourth Dimension. Now in Science that can mean two different things. The Fourth Dimension or 4D can mean: 1. Fourth Dimension, the mathmatical concept of afourth spatial dimension orSpacetime, the concept of time forming a fourth dimension. It’s not that hard to understand. Actually what it comes down to is Tess comes from the Spatial 4th Dimension which is subject to a Spacetime 4th Dimension! Confused? Us too! 😉 Just kidding. Check out the Wikipedia article on Fourth Dimension. Take notes we’ll be giving a test next week! 😉

Okay, enough mind bending, let’s have a peek at our story!

Mega Tales # 1, Page 5:

Here we go with Page 5! Now things are starting to jell! The Aliens have not only come into our Solar System and started an orbit around the Earth but now they have launched an shuttle to the surface. What could this all be about? Hang around and see!

We used the Nazca Lines as our backdrop setting for this segment. One of the ancient wonders of the world. What are the Nazca Lines? Glad you asked. Let’s access our favorite info resource, Wikipedia, for the answers:

The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches more than 80 km (50 miles) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, these are largely believed to have been created by the Nazca culture between 200 BCE and 700 CE. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks or orcas, llamas, and lizards.

The lines are shallow designs in the ground where the reddish pebbles that cover the surrounding landscape have been removed, revealing the whitish earth underneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes, and more than seventy are natural or human figures. The largest are over 200 m across. Scholars differ in interpreting what the lines were for but generally ascribe religious significance to them. “The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes, giant astronomical calendars, or landing for spaceships.”

The dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau has preserved the lines to this day, for the most part. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs.

The sun is shining! 😀 The birds are singing, and the bee’s are doing their thing! It seems like it’s been forever since we had an honest to gosh Spring Day to start off the weekend! We’ve had storms every weekend lately. But we’ve got a good forecast this weekend, we just hope the guys over at weatherbug.com are right!

Now, because You asked for it by Popular demand! Yes, that’s right! Really. Okay, actually it was Wilma You of Enterprise, Alabama who asked her boy friend, Howie Popular, to get on our case so we would get a new page up. 🙁 So for Wilma and Howie and anyone else out there halfway interested….

Mega Tales # 1, Page 6:

Today’s page was a little difficult. Keep in mind this line art was done 22 years ago, and is now being remastered, re-lettered and colored. We have been adjusting and correcting as we go and this one needed a lot of correction. Some of the perspective, particularly in the background was skewed. In addition when Mark and Adam did the line work they were doing it hoping that color would be added. So a lot of open area was left around Theo as Tess replaces his pajamas his NASA jumpsuit and then teleports him off to earth. This was done with the idea that special effects with color would be put into those areas for the action. If the idea for the effect was ever really sketched out it has long since been forgotten. SO not only did this page have to have extra correction but extra time was required to color as well. We racked up double hours on this one. We are not totally satisfied with the end result but then we never are.

So what did you think about the Nazca Lines Wednesday? Did you read the Wikipedia article we linked to? Interesting stuff, eh? What fascinates artistic types like ourselves is how they did designs of monkeys and spiders on such a large scale. It wasn’t like they could fly up to the moon to observe their progress as they were working on it. Or did they have some help with someone or something from a higher perspective? Hmmmm….Makes you think , eh?

Everyone have a great weekend, rest up enjoy life and report back to the MCG Blog Monday morning for the latest briefing. Class dismissed! 😉

Good Monday Morning to you! 🙂 Hope you had a nice weekend and are ready for another fun filled week here at MCG. Everyone here had a great weekend but busy! Nice weather did prevail and temperatures got near 90 degrees. Of course it would be the hottest day of the year when Tess creators Greg Legat and Mark Poe would choose to move their combined almost 9000 comic book collection from the shop it had been in on consignment to storage until they can catalog and list them on eBay. But the two had to do it, the comics shop where they were had gone out of business and the lease was running out at the end of the month. Such is life. 😉

News of the FaceBook Comics Con! As we mentioned a few posts back the foundation for the Summer Gala celebration is being laid right now for the kick off on the weekend of August 13-16, 2009!

The Golden/Silver/Bronze Age of Comics!Tiya Coleman, and Michael D. Hamersky along with our own artist and publisher, Mark Poe is honored to get to be the reviewers of this event which is an Art Jam of homages to the greats of the Golden, Silver and Bronze Age of Comics. We’ve already seen some great stuff by Harold Dean Cupec, Jay Piscopo, and Jonathan Biermann posted as this Jam just got started a few days ago on April 17th and runs through August 16, 2009. Join the group and help in celebrating, by sketching your rendition of any Golden, Silver, and/or Bronze Age characters. This special event is dedicated to the memory of Comics Legend, Frank Springer.

Guest professional artists are on hand to advise and critique submissions. The art jam is open to all members of Facebook Comic Con.

There is a corresponding Costume Contest that will run from Friday: June 5th, 2009. 8:00 AM, EST (NY) – Tuesday: August 11th, 2009. 6:00 PM, EDT (NY), so please visit that page too! Judging & Announcement Of Winners will take place at the scheduled first Friday date/time of: Saturday, August 15, 2009 | 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT (NY).:-D

Already mid-week?! WOW! 😮 Where does the time go? Maybe all this discussion of tesseracts , teleportation and time travel is altering our own time! 😀

Here’s a site a friend over on Facebook told us about. Szymon Barwi?ski Cyfer told us about KZ Magazine which is a Web Site about Polish Comics . The original site is all in Polish so not many of us here could read it but thanks to the fine multilingual folks over at Google we have a link for you which is translated to English. Google can also translate to Spanish or a number of other languages. The article contains some very interesting information on the Nazca Lines which we just saw introduced to our story line a page or two ago. That’s what got Szymon’s attention and he immediately commented to Mark with the above link then promptly showed Mark how to translate it to English. The article talks about some comics based at least in part on Erich von Däniken’sChariot of the Gods.Pretty cool, eh?

What really got our attention was the awesome artwork. We may not can read the comic book, unfortunately Google can’t translate that since it’s not in html code but that can’t stop us from admiring the great art! Check it out at KZ Magazine. Thanks for the tip, Szymon!

Okay, we forgot to tell you. Sure we mentioned it a couple times but once it was actually posted we forgot it!We’re referring to the MT Guidebook which is linked here and on the Mega Tales Menu Bar as well. There is a lot more information which Greg Legat wrote and which will be posted here but we have given you most of the character profiles for this first Tess story. Hope on over there and brush up on the cast’s background. There may be a test later, ya know! 😉

But enough banter! Now it’s time for…

Mega Tales # 1, Page 7:

Today we introduce another regular cast member, Dr. Hoyt Quillin. He and his family figure into the Tess Adventures prominently. See his profile in out MT Guidebook linked here. After her ship crashes to Earth, which is a whole other tale for a future issue, Dr. Quillin guesses the nature of Tess’ powers and gives her a nickname. As you can see here Theo popping into Dr. Quillin’s house unannounced is nothing out of the ordinary. On the next page we’ll meet another co-star, Nostradamus.

This page is a favorite of Mark’s who likes drawing ordinary settings with un-ordinary action occurring like Theo popping in seemingly out of nowhere. This one did not require as much correction to it. There is a bit of controversy surrounding panel 3. Greg as well as Marcus Lusk did not like placement of Theo. Mark agreed it could be better also and almost changed it for this posting but decided to leave it as is and see what others think of it. It can always be revised later if enough demand it.

It’s the first Friday of May! Spring is underway, Summer will be here before you know it! And the weekend is here! Starting out for us another rainy one but maybe it will clear out by tomorrow.

The Facebook Comic Con Summer Gala will be underway soon. With the First Friday weekend of May and tomorrow’s Free Comic Book Day, the FBCC begins the countdown towards it’s Summer Gala celebration on the weekend of August 13-16, 2009.

More characters introduced! Yep, the little fellow you see playing video games is: Nostradamas. The blond cocker spaniel of Dr. Quillin. He is actually not a dog at all, but another fourth dimensional creature somewhat like Tess. He was a “gun-runner” in his home dimension, and came to this universe to escape clients. He is capable of transporting objects as Tess does, and is able to communicate telepathically. He often goes with Tess on her trips into apace. He is called “Nosy”, for short.

Then we have, not pictured, but represented by her room:Alicia Quillin – Daughter of Dr. Hoyt and Helen Quillin. (Mrs. Quillin is deceased.) Age: 5. She likes to wear her hair in braids or a French braid. Wears dresses to school and sweatshirts and jeans around the house. Nosy is her “dog”.

This was a fun page to do. It is a bit dated with the Muppets’ poster, Ms. Pac Man game and all the rest, but still works for the story.

Hang in there, folks, the stage is almost set and we’ve got action coming right around the corner!

Have a great weekend! See you Monday in the MCG blog to talk about…whatever we have to talk about.

This little blog post has to do with autogyros! Something you should know about before you see page 9 of Mega Tales # 1 featuring Tess. 🙂 Some of the following info is courtesy of Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Another good source of information on this subject can be found at www.jefflewis.net .

An autogyro is a type of rotorcraft invented by Juan de la Cierva in 1919, making its first successful flight on January 9, 1923, at Cuatro Vientos Airfield in Madrid. Similar to helicopters, autogyros use a rotor to develop lift. Unlike a helicopter, the rotor is not powered by the engine. While a helicopter’s rotor is rotated by an engine during normal flight, the rotor of an autogyro is driven by aerodynamic forces through a phenomenon called autorotation. Since the rotor is not powered, an autogyro needs a separate source for propulsion, like an airplane. An engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, may provide thrust for the autogyro, but it’s possible to use jet engines or some other propulsion as well.

Autogyros are also known as gyroplanes, gyrocopters, or rotaplanes. The term Autogiro was a trademark of the Cierva Autogiro Company and the term Gyrocopter was originally a trademark of Bensen Aircraft.

An autogyro is characterised by a free-spinning rotor that turns due to passage of air upwards through the rotor. The vertical component of the total aerodynamic reaction of the rotor gives lift for the vehicle, and sustains the autogyro in the air. A separate propeller provides forward thrust, and can be placed in a tractor configuration, with the engine and propeller at the front of the fuselage (e.g., Cierva), or pusher configuration with the engine and propeller at the rear of the fuselage (e.g., Bensen).

Whereas a helicopter works by forcing the rotor blades through the air, pushing air downwards, the autogyro rotor blade generates lift in the same way as a glider’s wing by changing the angle of the air as it moves upwards and backwards relative to the rotor blade. The free-spinning blades turn by autorotation; the rotor blades are angled so that they not only give lift, but the angle of the blades causes the lift to accelerate the blades’ rotation rate, until the rotor turns at a stable speed with the drag and thrust forces in balance.

Pitch control of the autogyro is by tilting the rotor fore and aft; roll control is by tilting the rotor laterally (side to side). Three designs to affect the tilt of the rotor are a tilting hub (Cierva), swashplate (Air & Space 18A), or servo-flaps (Kaman SAVER). A rudder provides yaw control. On pusher configuration autogyros, the rudder is typically placed in the propeller slipstream to maximize yaw control at low airspeed (cf. McCulloch J-2).

So there you have it,a little primer info on autogyros. Why? Page 9 of our storyline, which is coming up Wednesday, introduces Theo and Nosy’s autogyro, one which the two designed and built themselves and which uses the principals described above but also utilizes some new inovations. So be here Wednesday and then back Friday for pages 9 & 10 to see what Theo and Nosy are up to as our Tess Adventure continues to unfold!

Before we go, here’s a little video from YouTube of a commercial autogyro which is currently being manufactured by Heliplane Aircraft, Inc. Enjoy!

We tried! 🙂 We intended to give you some more info on the history of Autogyros and more specifically why the technology has not been utilized as it should have been, having been around for nearly 100 years. Unfortunately we had more storms this morning which delayed the updates. So we’ll try to have that together for you for Friday. We hope your day goes well:-D

Mega Tales # 1, Page 9:

We gave you the lowdown on Autogyros in Monday’s MCG blog. In case you missed it here’s a little recap: Similar to helicopters, autogyros use a rotor to develop lift. Unlike a helicopter, the rotor is not powered by the engine. While a helicopter’s rotor is rotated by an engine during normal flight, the rotor of an autogyro is driven by aerodynamic forces through a phenomenon called autorotation. Since the rotor is not powered, an autogyro needs a separate source for propulsion, like an airplane. An engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, may provide thrust for the autogyro, but it’s possible to use jet engines or some other propulsion as well.

This technology has been around since the early 20th century and by all rights, with safety and efficiency in mind should have been developed instead of the helicopter. Some of the reasons it was not were purely political. But we’ll talk about that more elsewhere.

The Autogyro Theo and Nosy built. It started out inspired by the Delorean, then we added a little Mustang, ’70’s model Charger stylings, and a little ’60’s Batmobile and came up with our own vehicle. We kept the idea of stainless steel for the body. Rather than a plane propeller or jets for propulsion we went with the air-car style fans mounted as wheels which retract back into the fenders for driving down the highways like a regular car. Also for highway driving the rotor blades will retract to a smaller size, fold back and store in the rotorblade housing that goes from the back of the vehicle through the roof to the front hood.

Mother’s Day is Sunday! 😀 Everyone have a great weekend and do something special for the moms in your life on Mother’s Day this Sunday!

Time out! We hate to do it, but we can’t find any other way right now. This Spring has been a rough one for some of us. Folks around here are use to dodging tornadoes this time of year but this season we have already had almost twice as many as in an average year! And as if that were not enough to deal with, we’ve had hailstorms, gravity waves and torrential rainfalls! Some of us have sustained property damages which has caused extra work and distractions to say the least. So anyway to get to the point, we need a few days off to catch up on everything and then we will resume our regular postings. Hopefully we won’t need more than a week but we won’t say for now, it just depends on how fast we can get everything that needs fixing or has gotten behind, up to speed. As for next week there will be no postings either to Mega Tales #1 or to the MCG Blog site. Our presence on Facebook will continue during this time but also may be cut back some. Please be patient with us during this time and check back after next week to see where we are. Thanks for your support.

Let’s not wait any longer! Time for our latest page…

Mega Tales # 1, Page 10:

Here we are at page 10. We thought this page turned out pretty nice. Of course we try to make all of them special but some seem to work out better than others. Mark had a great time coloring it. There was the opportunity for some photo backgrounds which he always enjoys using and there was a wide range of color called for which just makes for a more appealing page all the way arround. That always takes a little longer but it’s still fun.

Some have asked what we mean by remastering the art. Well, the line art, as you may recall, was done back in 1987, 22 years ago. We didn’t even have the use of computers then and even those that were available were like hand held calculators compared to what we use today. All the art and lettering is therefore done completely old school style. So what we did to start with was scan all the black and white original 11 x 17 art boards into our system. We use an oversize scanner which is perfect for this. We then do initial clean ups, removing dirt, blemishes or scratches and patching anything that needs it. The next step is to remove the old panel borders and replacing them with crisp computer generated lines. The same for the lettering. The book was originally lettered by hand. Unfortunately the letterer did it a few pages in a sitting and and even though it was a good job, it was inconsistent in places. We thought the computer lettering with Blambot fonts would make for a better read. In some cases the art has been modified beyond the patching after removing the old word balllons. For instance the backgounds on pages 6 & 7. Pages 9 & 10 feartured a completely overhauled autogyro design. Then after all that the coloring process begins. Mark uses PhotoShop to break the pages down into layers. The line art is divided into two different pieces. One is for the coloring and the other is a black outline copy that fits over the color outline copy. Sound effects are separated to an different layer as is all the lettering. Each file may have as much as 15 layers. Some colors are filled with the paint bucket while some are filled with gradient colors. The retouching and shading are done and final adjustments to finish. Whew! That’s a lot of work just to explain!

Lou Graziani of Cy-boar.com has done some art for us! 🙂 Wow! We were bowled over when we got this little work of art in our email one day last week! Tess creator Stephen Greg Legat almost cried, he was so touched! Or was that the onions he was chopping up for his kids hamburgers? Anyway, he liked it a lot! Lou is the creator and publisher of Cy-Boar a weekly web comic available at www.cy-boar.com. Lou has some pretty neat characters he has created with some interesting stories. He has been publisning Cy-Boar for several years now, since 2005, if memory serves us. He has brought the concept from a rough idea he and his brother had in High School to a finely polished piece of work of the caliber you see his Tess drawing to the right. Check out his site and the archives. Take note: Cy-Boar is sometimes a bit intense with graphic violence. So, kids, get your parents permission before you view it. If you don’t like the sight of blood, well, you may want to avoid the site all together.

Progress report: One more week should do it! We have made great progress in getting things caught up at the MCG studio, but we are still not quite caught up yet. A lot of repairs have been done and others scheduled, and still some yet to be scheduled. At least the weather has been calmer the past several days. We have been making some progress on other projects we’ll fill you in soon about. We had hoped to have a new page of Tess to post this week but it looks very unlikely at this point. Maybe after this week we can get back on track. Thanks for your understanding and patience. See you soon. Next Monday at least.